Archive for February, 2010
I Bet Damien Hirst and Francis Bacon Will Fistfight In Hell
Saturday, February 20th, 2010There is shock value in the bull’s head resting in a gold-plated tank filled with formaldehyde: Damien Hirst’s “End of an Era” (2009). You circle around the installation, noting how the combination of death and chemicals makes the head seem deflated, like an old basketball: the eyelids are heavy, and droop; the cheeks and neck [...]
Future Video Games From Great Literary Works: A Modest Proposal
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010So a couple of weeks ago, a video-game company made literature professors’ heads everywhere explode by releasing an exquisitely gory third-person adventure game based on Dante’s Inferno, which transforms the retiring, middle-aged poet into a ‘roided-up action hero who takes on Hell’s demons with a cadre of weapons, including Beatrice’s Holy Cross and Death’s Scythe. [...]
Doubledown Media, One Year Later
Monday, February 8th, 2010One year after the fall of Doubledown: my former colleague Chris Gillick does a summation for Folio; and former company president Randall Lane publishes a book about the experience, entitled ‘The Zeroes.’ I wrote my own recount of the company’s collapse amid the Wall Street meltdown here.
Sic semper speculative bubbles.